Friday, January 23, 2015

Gold, Grunge, Glitz and Two Charlenes

This is my week to craft with ladies named Charlene!

On Monday, I visited a newer friend–named Charlene–at her home and helped her try out an emboss resist technique, some sponging, and some die cutting with the Butterfly Thinlits.

Then today at my place, I enjoyed a lovely day stamping with my long time best friend–and Upline– Charlene. She wanted to learn about the Bokeh Technique that I used here and while she worked on creating her watercolor backgrounds for the bokeh, I finished up my thank you cards to go out with my recent Stampin' Up! order.

Charlene achieved some great results and modelled them after my card from here but then branched out and made good use of some acetate and ribbon for a unique look! I am waiting on some pictures from her so I'll try to post those tomorrow.

Finally, my cards were finished and I was able to create the card I had been envisioning for days!
I started with a 5 x 7 Basic Black card base. I stamped my sentiment (from the now retired, See Ya Later stamp set) in the top left corner with Versamark and heat embossed with Gold Embossing Powder.

I cut a black card stock panel and stamped the fern from Butterfly Basics in Versamark, heat embossing again with the Gold Embossing Powder.

I used Dimensionals and offset this panel on another panel of Gold Foil.

I cut two of the the mid-sized butterfly from the Butterfly Thinlits, one in Basic Black and one from Gold Glimmer paper. I used the wonderful dryer sheet technique from Deb Valder to make it easy to remove the butterflies from the dies. I heat embossed the black one using Clear Embossing Powder to make it glossy.

Next, after deciding where my offset panel would go, I used Versamark to stamp some grungy flecks from Gorgeous Grunge. I also embossed these with Gold Embossing Powder. (Notice a trend here??) I then added the offset panel using Dimensionals.

I attached the black butterfly at the bottom of the offset panel using Glue Dots. The Gold Glimmer butterfly was attached to the black one using Glue Dots and the wings were bent up slightly to simulate flight.

I punched a tiny butterfly from Vellum using my Bitty Butterfly Punch and inked the edge in Versamark and then (you guessed it, right?) heat embossed it using Gold Embossing Powder. I bent up the wings and attached it with a Glue Dot near the sentiment.

The final touch for the outside of the card was to add a few rhinestones to the body of the bitty butterfly.

Since the card was black, I needed to create an inner panel to make it easier on which to write.
I cut a panel from Naturals Ivory card stock. Using Tuxedo Black Memento ink, stamped off, I stamped a few ferns at the bottom of the panel, not re-inking between stamps to give some added dimension. I also added a few flecks using black ink with Gorgeous Grunge.

I felt compelled to ink the edges loosely with Versamark and heat emboss them with Gold Embossing Powder. To complete the theme, I stamped the little butterflies–from the Perpetual Birthday Calendar stamp set–in Versamark and heat embossed them with Gold Embossing Powder.

Here are a few shots . . . it's hard to get good shots of the gold and glitter.